Some of my recent posts have been deliberately provocative, being that I question the relationship between language and bigotry. As a young literary idealist I always viewed words as colors on a palette, all available to the artist, and each of us an artist at life. I still view it that way. I will tolerate “bad” words in a wide variety of contexts.
It’s ok to paint an ugly picture, with paints or words. It’s expression, and it’s protected. It’s ok to call a guy a wetback, even if his family has been in this country for generations. The funny thing about the article I just linked to is, the guy acts like the “w” word is so audacious and forbidden, he refers to it only as the “w” word the first few times, until he is forced to explain himself. Before I clicked through and saw the photograph of the apparently hispanic author, I thought the “w” word might be “white”. I just really couldn’t think of a “w” word that referred to race besides “white” when reading only the headline.
Today for lunch, at the brick oven buffet in Holloway, they had a sauceless variety of pizza they called “Ken’s White Pizza” or something like that. It was at least “white”. So I started going off about how I was offended by their terming the pizza “white” because, what does pizza have to do with my ethnicity? Does my race really need to come into this? Is “white” pizza any less valid than any other pizza?
The black girl nearby actually laughed, to my relief, since I hadn’t noticed her until she burst out. Do I usually censor myself in such situations? Yeah. But people are missing out on some great lines here.
As I was telling Tim, or someone else maybe too, I think white guilt is dead, and us liberals have crossed over into fullscale oppression envy. I’m just a white guy with a bunch of other white guys who are supposed to hang around feeling guilty together. I’d rather be a brother. You know? I mean, these guys call each other brother. How cool is that? They’ve got a club. And they won’t have me as a member. Woody Allen was right: that’s a club I’d really like to be in.
Everyone loves an underdog. All the good movies feature underdogs prevailing. Being white sucks because there’s no claim to underdog status. Succeeding, for a white guy, is just inheriting a stolen past. Black guys get to overcome the odds. Now that’s a hero story.
Who’s MY nigger??